


breadcrumbs

by edgeofthewall



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 2x16 spoilers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 22:42:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3546458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgeofthewall/pseuds/edgeofthewall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she can't be with them right now, so she draws them instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breadcrumbs

**Author's Note:**

> so after posting these tags:  
> #i want them to track clarke in season 3#because bellamy tries so hard to respect her wishes but by day 4 he’s going nuts#so they follow her#and she’s got a huge lead#and knows that bellamy will be leading a team#and though she doesn’t want to be caught#she uses rocks and any surface she can find#to leave them art#she draws maya for jasper#she draws her dad#she draws octavia and her butterflies (maybe one day octavia will forgive her)#and it’s not a trail#so much as a promise#that she’s okay#and she’s never going to forget them#she just can’t be with them right now#so she draws them instead  
> on [this](http://clarkslexa.tumblr.com/post/109044595324/clarke-griffin-art) photoset, i received an ask requesting i write a fic about this so??? here i am! post 2x16 bellarke goodness because all i can do to survive the next seven months is write them!!

Bellamy lasts four days before he decides to go after her. He tries, he really does, to respect her wishes and her need for space but he can’t just sit at camp and wonder if she’s okay, or where she’s gone. He has to see her with his own eyes to confirm that Clarke Griffin is still out there somewhere.

He asks Lincoln, who agrees immediately. This, of course, means Octavia decides to come along despite how angry she is at Clarke, along with Monty, who carries the guilt just as much as Clarke or Bellamy, and surprisingly, Jasper. Bellamy isn’t sure if he decides to come out of concern, or simply because sitting in one place for too long hurts when you’re carrying the weight of love lost.

It’s not the welcoming committee he envisioned, but it will do.

They don’t even need Lincoln’s expert tracking skills the first day of searching for her, having decided to start at the dropship. They don’t find Clarke, but what they find has Bellamy’s throat tightening around a sob.

One wall of their former home is covered in what he remembers history books referring to as a mural. It’s Camp Jaha, sketched with Clarke’s familiar style, from a distance with a brilliant setting sun behind the remains of the ship they’d called their home. He knows it’s what she saw the day she walked away, one last glance. One last tribute. The drawing seems to breathe, to contain a bit of Clarke herself, and though it’s nothing more than scratches made by a rock against metal, it’s the most inspiring thing he’s seen in weeks.

They start off again, finally putting Lincoln’s skills to use to follow the path she’s following. The trail doesn’t seem to be following any destination, and Bellamy doubts she has one in mind other than as far away from what she’s done as she can possibly get. He only hopes he doesn’t have to wait for that path to walk her all the way around the planet before he sees her again.

They find the next drawing after two days of no sign of her aside from her trail.

This time she’s found some berries and turned them into crude paint and used her fingers to paint on the neat surface of a tree stump. Octavia reaches the drawing before him and falls eerily silent, making Bellamy rush to her side to see what it is.

It’s a bit more abstract than the first one, but he knows his sister can tell what it is just as well as he can.

It’s Octavia, with her butterflies, and her sword, and her smile, and her piercing stare. It’s Octavia, with her youth and her wonder, and her frightening ability to lay someone out flat in seconds.

Octavia’s jaw clenches, and Bellamy wants to say something, but he’s not even sure where to start.

“Let’s keep moving,” Octavia finally says, before stepping away from the stump without a second glance, and though he knows she’s a long way from forgiving, he notices the extra effort she puts into navigating through the forests to find Clarke.

He starts hoping for drawings, and Bellamy catches himself wondering if she’s doing this on purpose. He knows how much she understands him, and he knows that as she walked away, she probably expected him to go after her though it wouldn’t have changed her mind.

If these drawings are her way of comforting him, it’s working.

They find the next early the next day, this one made of rock against rock. It’s Maya’s profile, with the words ‘thank you’ scrawled underneath in loopy cursive. Jasper’s expression is unreadable, and Bellamy only hopes he finds some sort of comfort in seeing Maya the way she should be remembered, and not how she looked in her last moments.

Jasper joins Octavia at the front of the group.

They finally find her two weeks after leaving camp, a week after not finding any more of her art. She’s in the middle of sketching, having acquired a small book of paper and a few pieces of graphite from a village she passed through.

She hears them coming but doesn’t stop sketching, and Bellamy takes her silence as her allowing him to come closer and look.

This one is of him. It’s the way he looked at her as he begged her to come inside, every detail perfect, even down to the way his eyes had shone with unshed tears. Underneath, in that same loopy cursive, she’s written ‘may we meet again’, and dammit, he missed her so much.

“I’m not coming back,” Clarke says softly, looking up at each of them one at a time. A nod full of respect is the answer she receives from Octavia, and he knows that’s far more than Clarke ever dared to hope for. Jasper offers a gentle hand to her shoulder, with a squeeze so light she thinks she’s imagined it. Lincoln gives her a hug, and Bellamy makes a note to ask him about the day Clarke saved his life, something the Grounder only mentioned in passing.

From Bellamy, he responds to the kiss she’d left on his cheek with a kiss pressed to her forehead, murmuring against the skin, “Please find ways to let me know you’re okay.”

They return home, and it’s almost a month later when a Grounder arrives on horseback, announcing they have a parcel from Clarke kom Skai Kru for Bellamy.

He takes it, not even bothering to get to privacy before opening it.

It’s her best drawing yet, and the addition of colored paints tells him she’s settled somewhere, perhaps in a village, or the Capitol he’d heard whispers of, somewhere that she can heal.

It’s a landscape, and he hopes that it’s the scenery she looks at every day because it’s breathtaking, clear skies and stretching mountains with snow capped tips.

There’s a message at the bottom, and Bellamy thinks maybe he’ll be able to wait it out this time, that he can wait patiently until she decides to come home.

_We will meet again._

_\- Clarke_


End file.
